That night, the Commander gives Offred a skimpy outfit and makeup, and Nick drives them to a nightclub/hotel filled with prostitutes. Afterward, Serena Joy shows Offred a photo of her daughter. Offred and Ofglen attend a Prayvaganza, celebrating arranged marriages. One night the Commander explains the meaning of the previous Handmaid’s Latin, and Offred learns that the previous Handmaid hanged herself.Īfter a shopping trip one day, Serena Joy tells Offred to have sex with Nick in an effort to get pregnant, and Offred agrees. Offred recalls all the events that lead from the US government to the Republic of Gilead-a massacre of the President and Congress, a succession of restrictive measures imposed for “safety,” the removal of all power and possessions from women. Offred and Ofglen go shopping regularly, and Ofglen reveals that she’s part of a secret organized resistance. Offred and the Commander meet often, and the Ceremony becomes more fraught for Offred now that she and the Commander know each other. In the evening she sees the Commander, who surprisingly only wants to play Scrabble and get a chaste kiss.

In the afternoon, Offred remembers how Moira managed to escape from the Rachel and Leah Center disguised as an Aunt. The next day, Offred and other Handmaids attend Janine’s birth. Afterwards, Offred sneaks downstairs in a rebellious gesture and runs into Nick, who gives her a message from the Commander to meet the following night.

Then the Commander, the Commander’s wife Serena Joy, and Offred perform the Ceremony: the Commander has impersonal sex with Offred while she lies between Serena Joy’s legs. After her bath, she and the rest of the members of the household gather to listen to the Commander read the bible. She takes a bath and thinks about her daughter and the hysterical Handmaid Janine. Though her life depends on getting pregnant, Offred refused. The doctor suggested that her Commander might be sterile and offers to have sex with her. She describes her trip to the doctor on the previous day. She thinks about the previous Handmaid who left a Latin message scratched into the wall. She remembers her spunky friend Moira, her activist mother, and the loss of her daughter and her husband, Luke. Offred puts on a red uniform and goes on a shopping trip with Ofglen, and afterwards they stop by the Wall to look at the bodies of recently executed men. The scene changes to her current residence, where she lives with a Commander and his wife, Serena Joy. The novel begins with Offred, the first-person narrator, remembering her restricted life at the Rachel and Leah Center, a training camp for Handmaids in an old high school. The United States has fallen, overthrown by a theocratic regime, founded on rigid Christian principles and the disempowerment of women, which has installed a new nation called Gilead in its place.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood